Wait. What is that? A Q-Tip? An electric toothbrush head? No, the small white antennae protruding from WHS students’ ears are Apple AirPods. And to those students who proudly flaunt their new wireless headphones, yes, we get it, they’re wireless.

Apple first released the $160 AirPods in Dec. 2016, selling 16 million pairs in 2017 and 28 million pairs in 2018 (cnbc.com). According to Ming-Chi Kuo, a renowned analyst for predicting the sales of Apple products, there will be 50 to 55 million pairs of AirPods sold in 2019 and by 2021, that number will jump to 110 million.

When the product was first introduced, social media mocked AirPod wearers because they looked odd.

WHS senior Drew Glassman, who purchased his AirPods in 2016, said, “I heard that they had better sound quality, and I was tired of having to untangle the headphone strings when I took them out of my pocket so I thought, that looks pretty neat.”

For Glassman, AirPods were solely about practicality, rather than jumping on the “I got AirPods to look cool” bandwagon. Currently, this posh product is deemed a fashion item, as the number of AirPod owners in WHS exploded after this past holiday season.

I can’t go five Instagram or Twitter posts without seeing a meme with AirPods-related humor. Social media has turned a pair of headphones into a symbol of higher socioeconomic status. Most of them referenced lines like, “Smell like broke in here” or “I got AirPods and now I’m the CEO.” The implication of having AirPods is simply to show off.

However, the memes do hold some truth in terms of people using AirPods as a means to flaunt the fact that they can buy the product. There’s a difference between purchasing the product two years ago when first released compared to now, when everyone seems to be getting them.

Did people just realize that their wired headphones are an inconvenience? Last time I checked, headphones got just as tangled in 2016 as they did in 2018. But hey, you’re buying AirPods because they’re useful, right?

Maybe AirPods are the future of headphones, or maybe they’re just another technological phase that will be forgotten in a couple years. Anyone remember the Nintendo DS? Videogames on the go—who could ask for more?

To those who have AirPods, congratulations, you can now say you have AirPods. As for my choice of electronic listening, you can find me in the line at Marshalls browsing scented candles before I go through the checkout line with  my $15 wired headphones.

I haven’t jumped on the ‘pod-wagon’…yet.